That post explicitly says itās not a place for debate or participation from users of other instances.
Iād like to respect that but I think events like this need debate and discussion because it helps to develop and evolve the culture of lemmy and the fediverse in general.
The post says:
This post is āFYI onlyā for blahaj lemmy members. It is not a debate, and is not intended for non blahaj lemmy users to weigh in and offer opinions.
I recently received reports of a feddit.uk user espousing transphobia. Specifically, this was a feddit.uk user refusing to use the word cis, repeating the āadult human femaleā dog whistle, and claiming that trans women are not women. I approached a member of the feddit.uk admin team and raised my concerns and sought clarification of their stance on posts like this, where the transphobia is mostly dogwhistles, and ācivil disagreementā on the validity of trans folk.
I was told by the feddit.uk admin that their preferred response is this kind of transphobia is to āsort it out through discussion and votingā. However, the comments in question are currently more upvoted than downvoted, and little āsorting outā has occurred. The posts remain in place.
At this point, the admin stopped responding to my messages despite being active elsewhere on lemmy. When it became clear they were ignoring my messages and had no intention of removing the posts in question, I made the decision to defederate the instance.
I know some folk agree with the feddit.uk admins approach of pushback through discussion and voting, but this instance is not designed to be that kind of space. Blahaj lemmy is meant to be a place where we can avoid the rampant transphobia universally visible on nearly every other social media platform, and where we can exist without needing to debate our right to do so.
Wtf, this isnāt hate. This is someone stating their perspective with no harmful intent. If anything that comment is a great starter to a serious discussion on the topic.
If Ada doesnāt want such content on their instance they have the right to defederade and I fully support their right to it, no matter the reason (it is their instance after all).
I can understand why someone would disagree with that comment, but calling it transphobia or hate speech?
The part that becomes transphobic is the insistence that the definitions are ātranswomanā and āwomanā. A trans woman (note the space) is a type of woman, no one denies that. Itād be like using the term āblondewomanā and insisting that they are different from every other kind of āwomanā, and not included in womanhood.
Ada also pretty clearly stated why she didnāt link to the offending content:Ā
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14101300Ā in that she didnāt want to start a brigade, which I honestly think is pretty upstanding behaviour on her part. As well, I donāt see where the actual content has been linked, so I think the commenter above you might be full of shit, unless they can give a source.
Iām not going to participate further in this circus after this comment though.
The second I saw Adaās post the other day, I knew thereād be a PTB post with people either ignorantly, or knowingly pushing transphobic viewpoints.(Edit: I actually amend my statement. This comment thread was right at the top for me, but upon further reading people here have been really chill. Genuinely, thanks all for understanding that Blahaj is first and foremost a place for trans people to feel safe above any other concerns) Itās the ignorance that gets to me honestly, as if we donāt live in a world today where the majority of people arenāt susceptible to the overt fascism of Mussolini and Hitler anymore. Fascists, and other bad actors, realised they had to become smarter and more subtle with the way they spread hatred. They sow plausible-sounding doubt about transgender healthcare, like saying trans āchildrenā are put on hormones when thatās only ever offered at 16 or older, or that these same āchildrenā are given surgeries at 16 when no healthcare systems allow under 18 year olds to get surgery, and in fact many block trans adults from those life-saving procedures. Itās designed to be ādeath by a thousand cutsā because straight up attacking trans folks right to exist will cause most people to push back against that.Let me just ask you (the general you, not the person Iām replying to) what exactly the need for defining trans women as not biologically female actually is? Is it to stop us from using the womenās bathroom? Well, if your goal is to reduce the amount of people sexually assaulted, that will surely fail, and I shouldnāt have to explain why. Is it so that cis women can get the medical care they need, that differs from trans women? Thatās not a problem that exists, nor would most trans women deny that cis women have their own medical needs, when we obviously have our own too. Is it to stop trans women from going to DV shelters? Do you really think a woman thatās being terrorised to the level of leaving her home is going to purposefully harm other women?
What is the actual need for defining trans women separately then? Why are certain people so obsessed by this need? The best answer Iāve got is the fact that the US executive government has decided to define them separately, and under the cover of that, they not only have stopped issuing passports with trans folks chosen gender marker, but have stopped issuing them in their gender assigned at birth as well. Let me repeat for you, trans folks Are Not Able To Get A Passport At All Anymore In The United States thanks to this manufactured debate around biological sex. I shudder to think about what comes next after an act like that.
I see, I wasnāt aware of this perspective.
Not trans specific, and not really related, but I disagree with this view. Brigades are bad, they are the internet version of a street brawl and produce nothing of value. What I dislike is that āstopping brigadesā usually also prevents actual discourse.
I can only speak for myself: Since forever when someone uses the word āwomanā in a conversation it is implicitly understood that they are referring to a cis woman. What rubs me the wrong way is that it feels like someone is forcefully trying to change that implicit meaning to mean ācis woman or trans womanā which would then necessitate referring to a cis woman as a ācis womanā instead of simply a āwomanā, which in turn feels like Iām being forced to change the way I speak. I personally donāt think this is the case, but it is what it feels like. To me trans women are women as in, included in womanhood, and when I say the word āwomanā in a casual conversation Iām implicitly referring to a cis woman.
These two statements are an oxymoron though, you canāt really have it both ways. So if it āfeels likeā youāre being forced, thatās merely because social conventions push us to be clear with our language choices. It really isnāt any different from situations where you might have to say a āstraight womanā or a āwhite womanā because itās expedient to distinguish that group separately.
Also though, I wonder what situations youāre even referring to? If you start talking about women that can get pregnant (and just say āwomenā), as a matter of course Iām not going to scold you for not defining it as ānon-menopausal women that havenāt had a hysterectomyā, nor would most people. So, have you been scolded for something similar where you meant cis women? If not, this feels like itās just a strawman, a situation that doesnāt really come up, but is easy to try and win arguments over.
How do you know the poster is full of shit? You didnāt even ask for the source.
Also defederating from an instance while not including the actual offending content is not very transparent.
Because no one, not even the admins of feddit.uk, has stated the offending comment directly. It would be weird for a user of a different instance to be the only one in the know.
In this case, transparency has taken a backseat to preventing brigading, which I accept as a perfectly valid reason not to disclose. Considering Iām a user of the instance, my opinion here is actually important, because itās not her job to be transparent with users elsewhere. Not even feddit.ukās users, the admins there have the context and if they decide to share it is up to them.
But you didnāt ask the user how he got it! Surely before claiming that he is full of shit, you could have spent ~10 seconds typing out, āwhat is your source?ā I didnāt see you do that in piefed thread.
BLZ can do whatever, but others are also allowed to make their own conclusions about the possible reasons for the lack of transparency.
Theyāre the only person in this thread trying to sow division and call the Blahaj admins decision into question, besides you of course. I donāt need to assume the best intentions in that case, and can draw my own conclusions. As a trans person, if I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt all of the time, Iād expose myself to far too much hatred.
If you want to choose to believe the reason is anything other than āto prevent brigadingā than thatās up to you. feddit.uk admins seem to know the context, like I said before, so I donāt see how Ada could be lying hereā¦
Youāre welcome to assume bad faith or not bother, itās your right.
The fact remains, you donāt know whether Pondercat is full of shit or not. You donāt have any evidence and you are not interested in interacting with Pondercat.
"Prevent brigadingā is irrelevant at this point, the text is out, so you cannot prevent brigading if itās real. So the question about transparency remains.
Pointing out clear lapses in logic is not āsowing divisionā.
Have you actually followed the link above? It says āI think these are [the comments]ā.
I never said anything here was āsowing divisionā, please attribute that quote properly?(Edit: Apologies, I got my comment threads confused) While youāre at it, care to explain how preventing brigading is āa clear lapse of logicā because there are plenty of other people in this thread that understood and even lauded that decision. Or donāt bother? Iām not going to keep engaging with you.I have, yes. Nothing about the statement implies Pondercat is full of shit (i.e. lying).
Because if the text is correct, the argument that you want to prevent brigading isnāt relevant anymore. If the text is incorrect and one is concerned about brigading, then one would openly let everyone know that Pondercat has the wrong text.